Art makes you smile
Some pieces of art make you smile for 10 seconds, others make you smile every time you look at them
When you buy a painting, a drawing or any work of art, you might buy it because it makes you feel good, or it makes you feel something. You may hang the painting you just bought in the living room to admire the beauty of it, to relax and to feel good, maybe listening to good music and with a glass of wine in your hands, ok, I’m losing the thread… That piece of art hanging on the wall may make you smile, and
quoting the lyrics of fabulous Louis Armstrong “when you’re smiling the whole world smiles with you”.
If the observer smiles when looking at one of my works, my mission has been accomplished!
Ambiguous smile
I always try to put a shy smile or a smirk in the women figures I paint, still, sometimes they are obstinate and don’t want to smile, or they laugh to much, so the eraser becomes my best friend. Shy smiles and smirks are ambiguous, they give more interpretative freedom to the observer of the painting who then has the possibility to create his own story.
The painting in the image above, makes me smile every time I look at it, reason why it has been part of my private collection for a long time. This painting has been sold. It belongs to a series of ballet dance paintings inspired on ballet students. The painting depicts a scene I observed often while waiting for my daughters to finish their ballet lesson.
Inspired by women
Women are almost always the main subject matter of my paintings. Inspiration comes from simple situations that take place around me and from people I find on my way.
One of my last paintings “Woman In Piazza Del Carmine” was inspired by an elderly woman I met while waiting for my laundry to finish. She talked to me just for a few minutes which were enough to feel her deep sense of loneliness and isolation (very common feelings during this coronavirus pandemic). She had a shy smile on her sweet face, an ambiguous smile. The painting doesn’t depict a lonely elderly women but a young one, a woman with copper tears. I gifted her with eternal youth, and I added copper tears because despite her shy smile I felt her struggle. I never saw her again.
Curious to see the painting? This is the link “Woman In Piazza Del Carmine” saatchiart.com
I see you in my next post!
Ciao!
Raquel Yunta